The sound of gears clicking and whirring echoed through the classroom as robot sisters Sammy and Kenzie took center stage on a distant planet.
“Our transmission is completely shot,” Sammy said, her voice tense. “We have no communication with Earth. The engines are completely blown. We almost just died from a gas leak. We only have two weeks of supplies. We won’t survive here.”
“But Earth clearly knows what happened, so they’ll come for us eventually,” Kenzie said, her metallic frame shifting to face her sister.
“You remember when Mom said we would eventually get a dog?” Sammy asked.
“We never did,” Kenzie replied.
This was the opening scene of “Houston, We Have a Problem,” a 10-minute play directed by students Helen Carter and Jordan Walters.
It was one of seven original performances showcased during the premiere of A Human, a Robot, and a Stage, a trial-run interdisciplinary course at Mississippi State University.
The course, a collaboration between MSU’s Shackouls Honors College and the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, combined robotics with performing arts. On Wednesday night, Butler Hall Room 100 transformed into a makeshift theater where a full audience watched the student-led plays that explored themes of friendship, loss, romance and family, each brought to life by robots.
The class enrolled 13 students from a mix of humanities and engineering backgrounds. Over the semester, they worked in teams to write scripts, build robots, sew costumes and direct their own original 10-minute productions.
Donna Clevinger, a professor of communication in the honors college, led the course. She said the class served as a test run for a potential addition to the university’s curriculum.
“We’re hoping to make this maiden voyage a real class here on campus with engineering and the arts,” Clevinger said. “We’ll have a variety of different teachers from the artist world working with a variety of professors in the science world. That’s the vision.”
Tommy Anderson, dean of the honors college, said he supports the idea and believes the course could lead to a first-of-its-kind offering at Mississippi State.
“It has to be approved through a formal process,” Anderson said. “The beauty of the system is that we get to trial-run it first, and if it’s successful, we’ll make tweaks to it, add to it, take away some things and then we can pitch it more formally to be on the books.”
‘Show must go on’
Students in the class said they valued the collaboration across disciplines. Thomas Owen, a computer science major, said his partner helped him learn the basics of robot construction.
“I remember on the first day when we actually started constructing the robots,” Owen said. “I was like, ‘I’m not quite sure how I’m going to do this,’ but my partner was really helpful with learning about screws and nuts … and how all that construction goes together.”
Jayla Henry and Nicole Milla, also computer science majors, said the hands-on nature of the course pushed them to learn new skills.
“It was a lot of collaboration, a lot of learning as we go,” Henry said. “Even though we’re both computer science majors, I don’t think that really put us ahead of anybody else in building this, because it’s definitely a new skill for me. Writing, that was something new too.”
“Whenever we were building the robots, we were searching how to put on the balls and the screws and things like ‘what is a washer?’” Milla added. “It was a lot of experimenting.”
Emma Hardy, a communication major, was in a group on her own due to the odd number of students. She said she leaned on classmates from other disciplines for support.
“Everybody was sharing information with everybody,” Hardy said. “… This is way out of my comfort zone, but just with sharing knowledge, everybody’s been super helpful. We’re all in this together, learning something new.”
The course also tested students’ adaptability. Darien Hardy, a cybersecurity major, said resilience was key.
“You just have to be quick on your feet whenever something doesn’t pan out, or you have to make a quick shift,” he said. “So just learning how to be resilient in that and also be flexible with change and not panicking.”
That adaptability was put to the test when a major sound-system malfunction occurred just before showtime. The students had to act fast. Kenna Henkel, the teaching assistant, stepped in and manually played the pre-recorded lines from her laptop while students guided the robots to stay on stage.
Despite wardrobe malfunctions, falling robots and the occasional loose wig, the show went on.
The audience responded with laughter, audible gasps and applause, showing an appreciation for the humor and creativity that emerged even through technical difficulties.
“These things happen with humans all the time,” Clevinger said. “The show must go on, and the story must be told.”
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